I hope that whenever humans decide to finally get around to landing on Mars our first order of business is to go pick up Opportunity. Nothing would be sweeter than bringing that daring rover home after all this time.

Nontentional:We as humans really need to get off this rock. Don't get me wrong, I like it hear, but we need to expand. A simple meteor could take us out,and last I heard we only watch 2% of the sky.

Given that major asteroid impacts on Earth (big enough to threaten humanity as a whole rather than just a fraction of it) only happen on the millions of years scale, I don't think that is a pressing reason to get to space. If you want reasons to expand it would have to be new threats caused by humans directly or indirectly - so contagious diseases would be one reason (especially since air travel became so common), or nuclear weapons of course. Most other things just don't have the possibility of being deadly or disruptive enough to be a existential threat to humanity.

SN1987a goes boom:Vodka Zombie: OceanVortex: I feel like the Fry's dog from Futurama and the Mars Rover would be good friends.

Ugh... Just saw that episode the other day, and it wrecked me.

Watch Bender's Big Score. It evens out due to time travel that a version of Fry ends up going back and taking care of the dog shiats all over Jurassic Bark and other past favorite episodes that it almost ruined Futurama.

I must never tell my six-year-old goddaughter about the Opportunity rover, lest she actually steal some Burt Rutan blueprints, build a spaceship and go off by herself to rescue it.

Oh, wait. Maybe I should. If ever there was a thing to make her buckle down and do her subtraction homework, it's the thought of a poor little WALL-E-esque robot left all alone on a red planet with nobody to talk to until some smart girl can grow up and bring him home. She'd probably try to send him letters via helium balloon or write emails to him for Aunt Spidey to pass along through NASA.

...And I totally just used the personal pronoun. Wow, that was a sad XKCD.

Banacek:Watch Bender's Big Score. It evens out due to time travel that a version of Fry ends up going back and taking care of the dog shiats all over Jurassic Bark and other past favorite episodes that it almost ruined Futurama.

I agree Banacek - The original Jurassic Bark was a wonderful and powerful episode BECAUSE it was sad. Then they go back in time to try to un-sad it.

It'd be like going back and saving Bambi's mom, allowing Charlotte and Wilber to live happily ever after, or remaking the Star Wars movies as prequels and turn Darth Vader into a joke and Yoda into a miniature ninja instead of an all-seeing spirit guide. No screen writer would be so inept as to think any of those would be a good idea.

However, there will be a time - probably not in my lifetime - that some of the early martian probes will be brought home. Whether they are in a museum or some trillionaire's foyer depends on what kind of place the earth becomes.

I like to think that Opportunity wasn't looking forward to leaving this strange, alien world. That he was eager to continue his exploration and has been happily chugging away for the last 9.75 years since his original mission was completed

jfarkinB:And now, in 2013, it will start its tenth. Not until January 24, though -- so, you're right, subby is from a little bit in the future.

I thought the same thing reading the headline. I remember mainly because I started dating my now wife the same day the rovers landed on Mars. I remember speaking about it at length over lunch with her, figuring if she was horrendously bored with talk about planetary rovers and the like we should probably figure that out sooner or later because that was going to be a recurring topic. She obviously wasn't or at least I was charming enough (or she patient enough) that it didn't matter.